A multitude of applications can be envisioned for a mobile device that can determine its own location in physical space. For example, by knowing its location relative to a map of the space it is in, the mobile device can determine locations of interest and how to reach them. But this implicitly assumes that these locations of interest are fixed in time and documented in the map. If, however, the mobile device is interested in interacting with other mobile devices whose locations are potentially changing, then it will need to periodically receive updates about the locations of those mobile devices. A wealth of social networking applications would be enabled if mobile devices could locate each other. The challenge is to design an efficient, low-latency location update protocol requiring minimal communication between devices and, consequently, minimal battery power consumption.
In view of the above, it should be appreciated that there is a need for methods and apparatus which allow for the communication of location information using relatively few communications resources. That is, there is a need for efficient methods of communicating location information using broadcast signals which include relatively few bits. It is desirable that in at least some embodiments that location information can be communicated using one or more peer discovery time periods which may be spaced apart from one another in time.